Rob Neyer (born June 22, 1966) is a baseball author. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS, and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist from 1996 to January 2011 before becoming SB Nation's National Baseball Editor from February 2011 to January 2014. A disciple of major sabermetrics figure Bill James, his writing is an outlet for baseball fans to gain insight that statistics and historical analysis can offer.

Neyer was introduced to Bill James by a casual friend, Mike Kopf, nine months after dropping out of college. He was soon hired as a research assistant. Neyer's first project with James was helping compile material for the book This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones, a collection of material from the Abstracts.[3] After four years under the tutelage of James, Neyer took a job at STATS, Inc., before joining ESPNet SportsZone, ESPN.com's forerunner, in 1996.[2]

Neyer wrote for ESPN for 15 years from 1996 to January 31, 2011.[4] He joined SB Nation as its National Baseball Editor on February 1, 2011 for 3 years; he wrote his last column for the site in January 2014.[5][6] In an interview, he said that he had had prior opportunities to leave ESPN.com but that nothing had felt right until this offer from SB Nation.[7] Within the baseball writing community Neyer is a part of the Baseball Writers' Association of America and the 10-person voting panel for the Fielding Bible Awards.[8]

He is the author or co-author of six books: Baseball Dynasties (2000) with Eddie Epstein, Feeding the Green Monster (2001), Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups (2003), The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (2004) with Bill James, Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders (2006), and Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends (2008).

Working through both historical research and statistical analysis, Neyer critiques conventional narratives in sports as a historian. In reference to his book Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends Neyer stated, "I'm not going to argue with Aristotle. Maybe poetry is more important—and most of the stories in the book do qualify as poetry—but I think there's a small place for history, too. And since I'm no poet, I'm happy to fill that small place when I can."[9]

Bill James describes him as "the best of the new generation of sportswriters. He knows baseball history like a child knows his piggy bank. He knows how to pick it up and shake it and make what he needs fall out."[10]

Dave Cameron has attributed Rob Neyer as having introduced himself and most of his generation of baseball writers to sabermetrics.[11] Neyer edited and helped Jonah Keri with his book The Extra 2 Percent[12] and worked with Carson Cistulli to develop his criteria for the NERD formula.[13]

Recently, as National Baseball Editor at SBNation, he has helped fellow editor Jeff Sullivan (originally of Lookout Landing) reach a larger audience, as well as editor Grant Brisbee, writers like Jason Brannon, Will McDonald, or Dan Moore. Moore cites Neyer as "the reason I'm writing about the St. Louis Cardinals today."[14]

In 2000, Neyer spent the summer in Boston on a book project, writing about the Red Sox that season at Fenway Park. However, his draft was harshly rejected by his New York publishing house that December. Neyer re-edited the submission and lost money by publishing the eventual Feeding the Green Monster as an e-book in spring 2001. (Neyer ruefully retold the fiasco, "Bestseller to E-book in One Easy Step", on his website.)[15]

In February 2001, Neyer infuriated many New York Yankees fans when he cited metrics such as win shares and Clay Davenport's Fielding Translations to argue that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's defense consistently rated among the worst fielders at his position.[16] Subsequent studies and the development of advanced metrics for evaluating fielding capabilities continued to support Neyer's evaluation and showed Jeter to be consistently among the lower ranking American League shortstops in fielding prowess.[17][18] However, managers and coaches disagreed, as Jeter won five Gold Glove awards from 2004 to 2006 and 2009 to 2010,[19] though it is often remarked that many winners of the Gold Glove awards have won based upon their offensive prowess and their overall reputation.[20]

Neyer addressed this controversy in a recent article entitled Derek Jeter Retooling His Swing After Down Season; Let's Hope It Works. Neyer justifies his previous articles saying that "everybody was saying Jeter was perfect, and if there's one thing I know too well it's that nobody's perfect" but then added "Derek Jeter is one of the five or six greatest shortstops ever, and I'm really going to miss him when he's gone. I don't mean gone, physically. I mean gone, as an outstanding player."[21]

In September 2004, Neyer used a pseudonym ("Ike Farrell") on Amazon.com to write a negative customer review of One Day at Fenway, a then-new baseball book by Steve Kettmann.[22] Neyer subsequently took offense to positive reviews that he believed Kettmann's friends and relatives had posted.[23]

"How did this project go so terribly wrong?" Farrell/Neyer wrote. "Presumably the author wound up with plenty of source material, and so I can only assume that he [Kettmann] lacked either the talent or the time (or both) to shape the material into a decent piece of non-fiction."[24]

A Newsday newspaper reporter quickly identified Neyer publicly as the actual reviewer.[23] On September 6, Neyer issued an article explaining his actions, "I had such a visceral reaction to Kettmann's book that I felt compelled to do something" and so, under a "pen name" he decided to write a customer review on Amazon.com.[23] "I didn’t even imagine that it could do anybody any good if I wrote as myself", Neyer rationalized.[23]

Kettmann responded: "The thing that I find strange about all of this is that [Oakland A's general manager] Billy Beane, someone who I thought Rob Neyer respects, read my book cover to cover and told me he loved it."[citation needed]

^Gleeman, Aaron (November 1, 2010). "Yadier Molina leads fifth annual "Fielding Bible Awards"". NBCSports.com. Retrieved November 18, 2010. Voted on by a 10-person panel that includes Bill James, Peter Gammons, Joe Posnanski, Rob Neyer, and John Dewan as well as the entire video scouting team at Baseball Info Solutions, the award sets out to recognize the best defensive player at each position, regardless of league.